


Dreams That Transform to Visions

by wildfirelies



Category: Glee
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friendship, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-27
Updated: 2011-10-27
Packaged: 2017-10-25 22:12:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/275389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildfirelies/pseuds/wildfirelies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Tina and Mike found out about Blaine being half-Asian and their respective reactions, plus Kurt’s amusement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreams That Transform to Visions

**Author's Note:**

> Deviated from the original prompt a bit, but the essence of it is still there? Thanks to [](http://firstbreaths.livejournal.com/profile)[**firstbreaths**](http://firstbreaths.livejournal.com/) for everything else because this fic would not have existed without her help and cheerleading.

1\. Tina

It’s the first day of senior year and already, Tina wants to crawl back into bed and sleep through the rest of the year. It’s not even time for Glee, yet she’s already been slushied. She can’t wait for winter break. Giving up on making her makeup look presentable, she grudgingly heads to the choir room, where she encounters her equally enthusiastic classmates. By which she means her equally slushied and dismayed classmates.

Except for Blaine, apparently, because he’s standing at the front of the room, next to Mr. Schue, looking as happy and excited as he always manages to, and Tina doesn’t understand because she knows for a fact that he was slushied three times today and hell if that’s not a good reason to be in a bad mood the rest of the day.

“Guys, guys, settle down!” Mr. Schue calls out, trying (and failing) to get their attention. It’s not for another ten minutes that they all actually do quiet down and turn to the front, where Blaine is still standing, still smiling. Tina looks around the room, then, at the remaining members of the club. Artie’s rolling himself forward and back idly, Brittany is texting someone on her phone (Santana, Tina thinks — who else would she look so focused while texting? Maybe her cat) and Blaine, Blaine looks like he’s got something to say but he’s just too polite to interrupt them.

“Welcome to a new school year, guys! After a successful last year, I can only expect you guys to do even _better_ this year.” Mr. Schue sounds as optimistic and delusional as he always does and while she can appreciate the enthusiasm, she doesn’t think they’ll really get anywhere with a grand total of four members. It feels weird, sitting here without Mike, Kurt, Mercedes and even Finn, Rachel and everyone else. For so long they were a family and now everyone’s left, moved on, and she’s still stuck in tiny little Lima, Ohio.

Yes, she’s totally psyched for this year. Not. You could say she’s jealous or even resentful of everyone who’s going away to college.

“Mr. Schue, how are we supposed to classify for Sectionals if we only have four members?” Artie asks, rolling himself back against the risers. Tina nods in agreement, Brittany mutters something that Tina isn’t sure she wants to have heard and for the first time all day, Blaine looks a little bit dismayed.

“Actually, Artie, I’m glad you asked. Blaine here has a _great_ idea for something we can do to recruit more members.”

“Does it involve singing in the courtyard? Because I think we can all agree that doesn’t really work. Ever,” Tina points out. She hates to be the buzz kill, but she feels so completely indifferent toward everything right now. All she wants is to be home and to Skype Mike. Or to graduate. That would be nice, too. She idly wonders if this is what senioritis feels like.

“It doesn’t, actually,” Blaine says, clearing his throat. “We know that a lot of people enjoy singing and dancing but are too scared to actually join New Directions due to the... unique and ignored bullying that goes on within this school. We can perform extremely sexual songs during pep rallies all we want, but fact of the matter is, that’s not going to get us any members. So instead, what we have to do is handpick members that we know are talented, who we know would join us, instead of expecting a performance in the courtyard to do it for us.”

“Can I bring my cats? Charity’s a really good dancer and Lord Tubbington just wants to be famous,” Brittany says, looking up from her phone for the first time that day. She gets equally confused looks from everyone except Blaine, who grins at her.

“I’m not sure your cats will be interested, but you can always bring them to rehearsal! Provided that no one is allergic, of course,” he replies. Mr. Schue quickly changes the topic to song choices for their upcoming performance, before Blaine interrupts him (actually, he waits until Mr. Schue pauses before raising his hand and uttering a very Kurt-like, “if I may?”) and continues to discuss his idea to get new members.

They spend the rest of the hour discussing Blaine’s idea before Mr. Schue cuts in and gives them their first assignment. It’s nothing particularly hard or creative, so Tina’s not worried about it, not really, and she gathers her things and gets ready to leave.

Artie’s already leaving, Brittany pushing his wheelchair, when Blaine catches up to Tina, his trademark “I’m going to charm  
the pants off of you” smile on his face (or at least that’s what Tina dubbed it). “Hey, Tina! How was your summer?”

“Good. I worked, spent time with Mike and then moped once he left for school,” Tina says and shrugs. Her summer wasn’t all that bad, but she wasn’t lying about the moping. The majority of her summer had been spent wishing Mike wouldn’t have to leave, then missing him once he had. It hadn’t been pretty. “How was yours?”

“Change Mike for Kurt and you’ve got my summer,” Blaine answers, smiling radiantly. For someone who was supposedly pining after a college boyfriend, much like she was, he didn’t look upset in the slightest. She couldn’t really imagine Blaine looking upset, now that she thought about it, which made her wonder if he was one of those people who just held it all in and only let certain people see their vulnerabilities.

“Anyway.” Blaine’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “I was wondering if you’d like to do a duet for next week’s assignment? I figured since there are only four members now, we could afford to each have a solo and still do a duet and I found this song when I was in Manila visiting family that I think would work _perfectly_ with our voices and —”

“Wait, wait, go back,” Tina says quickly. “Manila... as in the Philippines?”

Blaine nods, looking puzzled as to why that was worth interrupting his duet idea. Or so Tina thinks. But this means that Blaine has to be at least partly Asian, and after spending three years thinking she and Mike were the only two Asian-Americans at McKinley, it comes as a relief to know she’s not alone.

And maybe she really is going off the deep end because she missed Mike that much and she shouldn’t be left alone for long periods of time. Regardless, the fact that Blaine is Asian as well is _big_ news.

“Yeah, my mom moved to the U.S. for college when she was eighteen,” Blaine says nonchalantly. “Anyway, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but it’s a relatively new song and even though it’s originally sung by one —”

Tina isn’t letting go of it this easily. “Does that mean you’re half Asian?” she interrupts again. “Are you one of those ‘let’s do everything Asian’ kind of Asians? That’s how Mike was and even though I love him and all his adorable Asian habits, it kind of got tiring.”

“Uh, no, I suppose not,” Blaine says after a moment. “My mom doesn’t really speak Tagalog to me, nor does she make any typical Filipino food... I guess you could say she’s not big on her culture. We do visit her family every summer, though, does that count?”

“Wait, if you’re half Asian, how does my mom not know yours? My mom knows every Asian from here to Cincinnati, I swear to you,” Tina says. She isn’t sure whether to be excited or worried about this new found discovery, because while she honestly does love her boyfriend, she got tired of dim sum and all the other Asian traditions that Mike’s family followed. To be honest, she was never a big fan of Mike’s parents anyway — or at least not his dad.

“My mom works for a company in New York, she doesn’t spend much time in Ohio,” Blaine answers. They’re nearing their cars now; Blaine’s sleek Civic and Tina’s roomy CRV, and Blaine turns and smiles at her. “You seem a little bit apprehensive. Just so you know, I’m not going to enforce my ‘Asian-isms’ on you.”

Tina breathes a sigh of relief, smiling at Blaine. She unlocks her car and deposits her things in the backseat. “As long as you don’t break Kurt’s heart, I think you and I could be friends.”

“I would never,” Blaine says solemnly. He gives her one last grin before waving and getting in his car, pulling out of the parking spot quickly.

Maybe senior year won’t be so bad after all.

2\. Mike

He hasn’t even been back in Ohio for an hour and Mike already wants to go back to Juilliard. He misses his friends, his roommate, his teachers, the campus, _everything_ , but he misses Tina so much more. Unfortunately, he doesn’t even get to see her until the afternoon, after dinner with his parents. He isn’t sure he’ll last that long.

New Directions is having a party that night, since everyone is in town for the holidays and well, they’re a slightly dysfunctional and codependent family that misses each other. But Mike’s parents are strict and they wouldn’t let him go unless they got to pick him up at the airport (instead of Tina, like he’d originally intended to) and he ate dinner with them.

That’s a whole four or five hours he has to wait to see Tina. It’s excruciating, but compared to the four months they’ve spent away from each other, it’s not so bad and Mike’s a pretty patient guy. He thinks he’ll manage.

Halfway through the drive home, Mike falls asleep in the car and wakes up when they get home, an uncomfortable kink in his neck. His mom had dinner ready and the table set, and while Mike can appreciate the nice gesture, all he can really think about is that it’ll be less to do before he can go see Tina.

Maybe this managing thing won’t go so well.

They spend the dinner in an awkward half silence but not really. Mike’s mom asks him about his dance classes, about the clubs he’s joined and the friends he’s mad. His dad, as per usual, wants to know his GPA, his grades, his classes, his professors. Between the both of them, they’ve pretty much covered his whole college experience so far.

It’s strange to think that now, now that he’s in college and he’s officially moved out of their house, he won’t really be living with them anymore. He’ll graduate college and get his own apartment and become an adult and this stage of his life, with his dad watching his every move, will be move.

It’s refreshing to say the least.

He offers to help his mom with the dishes and they spend fifteen minutes in the kitchen, washing everything slowly and talking about anything and everything. He’s a lot closer to his mom than his dad (for very obvious reasons, he thinks) — not that he doesn’t love his dad or anything. He’s just not as comfortable around him. He makes him feel pressured, like he’s being monitored 24/7 and his dad’s high expectations make him feel queasy.

Once they’re done with the dishes, Mike excuses himself, grabs the keys to his car (which is parked inside the garage, _weird_ , they never parked it in the garage while he was still living at home) and all but runs out of the house, driving in a hurry to Tina’s house. He calls her when he’s on his way there, tapping the steering wheel with his fingers impatiently as he waits for her to pick up.

“Hey,” she says when she answers the phone, her voice soft and so Tina-like that he wants to listen to her forever. It’s not like they haven’t spoken on the phone since August because, if he’s being honest, they talk for at least five minutes every day, text all day and Skype at least once a week, but it’s different now, because they’re both in the same town, he’s only ten minutes from seeing her again and he _can’t wait_.

"Hey, yourself," he says, flicking on his turn signal before making a left turn into her neighborhood. Being here reminds him of summer, of endless days sitting by the pool, of watching movies and cuddling and okay, of make out sessions when her parents weren't home, too. "I'll be there in like two minutes. I miss you."

"Good. Hurry," she says in her best commanding but somehow still affective voice. He grins, making another left onto her street. He watches the houses, counting off in his head until he reaches hers, pulls in the driveway and turns off the car. Not even two seconds later, she's running out of the house, her phone still in her hand and he gets out of the car quickly, shoves his phone into his pocket and catches her when she throws herself at him.

They hug for what feels like an eternity, until Tina’s parents come outside and hug him too, and they spend a few minutes playing catch up; Tina’s mom wants to know all about college and her dad just wants to know if he’s gone to see any baseball games at the new Yankees stadium. Once they set off for Rachel’s house, holding hands above the console and chatting amicably while music played quietly in the background, Mike felt like he could finally breathe, relax and just let go.

It was a little worrying how dependent he was on Tina, because he was 18 and a college freshman and they were doing the long-distance thing, but it didn’t matter. They were both in it for the long haul so whether or not Mike’s suitemates thought he was whipped was completely irrelevant (though he did like reminding them that _he_ got laid more often than they did and his girlfriend lived in a different state).

Their arrival at the party was a frenzy of hugs and greetings, seeing how everyone was, who had changed and who looked and acted the same, but more than anything, it felt like a big family reunion where all you did was sit around and talk about each other’s lives. It felt comfortable, familiar, even if things seemed a little bit different, especially with this year’s seniors. Artie, Blaine, Brittany and Tina were the only ones left over from last year — the rest of the kids in the club were all new, apparently all recruits thanks to a genius plan of Blaine’s with no contribution from Mr. Schue whatsoever, or so Tina said — and it was obvious that they were closer now, in a way that they hadn’t been last year when everyone was off on their own little groups.

In a way, they had all been close, they were all a family, especially nearing the end of the previous year, but it just seemed _different_ now, what with most of them spread all over the country and the remaining members still in Lima, sticking together.

“Did I ever tell you Blaine was Asian?”

They’re sitting on the couch in Rachel’s basement, Tina on Mike’s lap and Kurt and Blaine sitting side by side on the floor by them, when Tina asks. Before Mike can say anything, Blaine groans and drops his head to Kurt’s shoulder, who pats his knee sympathetically. Mike just feels lost, like he’s missing something, which probably pertains to Blaine being Asian.

“Half-Asian, Tina, and are we really going through this again? Apparently, the fact that I’m half-Asian is a huge deal and Tina had a whole freak out over it at the beginning of the year.” Blaine grins crookedly at Mike, sitting up straight so he can see him better, which in turn separates him from Kurt. Kurt sighs dejectedly and follows Blaine, which Mike finds adorable — he and Blaine, and himself and Tina have been playing the reunited couples all night, cuddling and kissing and basically staying glued to each other. To be fair, Brittany and Santana disappeared long ago and Finn and Rachel haven’t been very subtle at all, but for the most part, everyone’s talking, laughing and sharing with each other.

“But I knew you were half-Asian,” Mike says simply, wrapping his arms around Tina’s waist and resting his head on her shoulder. He presses a quick kiss to her neck before continuing. “I’ve always known, dude, it was pretty obvious. How is it a big deal?”

Kurt’s grin is hilarious, Tina just looks surprised and Blaine is laughing quietly, his shoulders shaking. He honestly did know (how could he not?) so he doesn’t see what the big deal is; he mostly just feels like he missed something. “You don’t understand, I pestered him for weeks when school started because he just casually mentioned he’d gone to Manila over the summer and well, you know me, I tend to be on the dramatic side with certain things,” Tina explains. “And now apparently you knew, Kurt knew and no one else really cares so I just feel strange now.”

“You’re the best kind of strange there is,” Mike says and smiles against her neck, his eyes meeting Blaine’s. The rest of the night goes by uneventfully, and it’s not until the end that Mike realizes how much he misses this, misses New Directions and Tina and all of them being together. He’s looking forward to going back to school, but he doesn’t want to leave this behind.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Tina’s smile is beautiful, calm and everything he loves about her in a simple gesture. He offers his hand as they walk outside and shakes his head. “Nothing much. Just happy to be back. And still wondering how you didn't already know Blaine was half-Asian until he told you.”

Tina's smack in response has him laughing all the way to the car.  



End file.
